Obama waving-hand gaffe picture NOT a hoax or a Photoshop after all!

[Lucky9teen]

Over the last few hours a photo has begun to circulate on the blogs showing Obama supposedly at the “Open Government Partnership” conference today committing an egregious gaffe by raising his hand to block the face of another world leader.

Here’s a link to the MSNBC photoblog where most bloggers first noticed the image; and here’s the URL of the image itself:

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/125682969/Getty-Images-News

Now, many veterans of the Great Photoshop Wars of 2003-2010 will take one look at this photo and see about a hundred things “wrong” with it. Not only does Obama’s hand seem Photoshopped into the image, but Obama himself seems to have been awkwardly pasted in. In fact, under closer inspection, about half the people in the image appear to have been inserted artificially; in other words, the whole scene looks to be constructed almost from scratch.

But I wondered: Since this photo can be found on an MSNBC site, are they punking the blogs — or did somebody manage to punk MSNBC and pass off a hoax photo as the real thing?

So, following the lead in the image’s credit line — “Allan Tannenbaum-Pool / Getty Images” — I went straight to the supposed source…and to my utter astonishment, I discovered that the image is indeed from Getty Images and can be found on their site:

Getty Images — Title: Obama Meets With World Leaders At The United Nations

Here’s how it appears on the Getty Images page, with their watermark over the picture:

And here’s the official Getty caption:

Caption: NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 20: U.S. President Barack Obama waves while standing with aother leaders during the Open Government Partnership event at the United Nations September 20, 2011 in New York City.

It still looks fake to me, but that would mean that Getty itself is now putting out faked photos — which is extremely unlikely, especially after the number of times other news wire services were burned by untrustworthy stringers.

The image’s authenticity is further confirmed by the existence on the Getty site — which serves as sort of a “raw feed” of news photos which subscribing editors can browse through — of an “alternate take” photo showing a slight close-up of Obama in the group shot, this time with his hand not blocking his neighbor’s face:

Getty Images — Title: United Nations General Assembly Coverage:

And then there’s this shot, another out-take without the offending hand:

So, what this all means is:

Unless this is some kind of hoax of unparalleled proportions, the gaffe-tastic photo of Obama idiotically waving his hand in a group shot of world leaders, blocking the face of one of them (Tsakhia Elbegdorj, the president of Mongolia, as far as I can tell), really is an authentic photo, and is worthy of Internet infamy.

Have at it!

(And if you have any evidence to the contrary, that it really is Photoshopped somehow, and that the hoax fooled Getty Images, MSNBC, and several other news outlets, please present your evidence in the comments section; in a sense, that’d be even more newsworthy than the already-known fact that our President is a clueless narcissist.)

[Ann Archy]

I PRAY he isn't THAT stupid.....it would be really Unbelievable!!

Will Rush mention it???????

[edge919]

Obama thinks he’s getting ready for a deposition.

[Ann Archy]

I KNEW it!! It’s just to make US look bad.

[FortWorthPatriot]

I can hear the music in the background:

“I’m - too sexy for my shirt.
Too sexy for my shirt.
Too sexy it hurts...”

[Chandalier]

OMG! Are you kidding me?

[Gargantua]

What a completely useless imbecile. No wonder the World hates this fake statesman. He's a joke, and they no longer wait to laugh behind his back.

If I had voted for this loser, I'd be really, really ashamed. God deliver us from this stain.

[Iron Munro]

I don’t see the big gaffe here, other than looking goofy as usual..
the bike helmet picture was much more goofy, imo

[autumnraine]

Yep, the woman below Obama isn’t smiling in that one.

[liberalh8ter]

LOL

[GSWarrior]

Someone at Getty Images deserves a big raise for choosing this photo from the contact sheet to make available to the public.

[autumnraine]

So blocking the face of another world leader to wave at a world leader phototaking session isn’t a gaffe?

[Bikkuri]

[Fantasywriter]

Thanks for the ping! Please believe me, this man is self-medicating. Yes, he’s always been a childish narcissist, and bad judgment/lack of class is his default mode. But he didn’t make gaffes of this order of magnitude on the world stage in the beginning. His singsong, idiotic teleprompter UN speech delivery was worse than usual, too.

He’s on something. I wonder what? Did he skip his last physical? Seems a long, long time since the dr told him to moderate his alcohol consumption. Wonder what Valerie Jarrett has fixed him up with, to get him through the ‘tough’ times [read: graveyard spiral of his popularity/poll #s]?

[DManA]

My first impression wasn’t that he was waving at the camera. I assumed saw someone in the audience and waved to them inadvertently screwing up on of about 50 pictures they were going to take. Big deal.

[skinkinthegrass]

Who came first Obama or Alfred E. Newman?
Alfred E. Obama
LL!

[Anima Mundi]

(He) was much further out than we thought, and not waving, but drowning.

I can’t remember the poem this is from and it was She not He, but a good photo title would be NOT WAVING, BUT DROWNING.

[b4its2late]

Funny as hell, but I expect no less.

[rod1]

Which leader’s face is he covering with his hand??

[LucyT]

I have to believe that they are both purposefully trying to embarrass the United States of America by being the worst people on earth.

____________________________________________________________

Did you see this photo?

http://mrs-o.com/storage/124370038.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1315612814363

[SueAngel]

He’s not medicated - he NEEDS medication. I have a degree in Psychology, but am not a clinical psychologist,so I can say this without fear of being sued for malpractice. In my opionion (and I’ve heard smarter people than me say the same thing), he has the classic signs of NPD - Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is a serious mental illness that is very hard to treat.